Higher education engagement in leadership development: using autobiographical narrative to understand potential impact

The paper explores the lived experience of leadership learning and development in a single case study of an entrepreneur participating in a major leadership development programme for owner-managers of Small and Medium Sized Enterprises (SMEs). Based on autobiographical research, it provides a rich contextual account of the nature and underlying influences of leadership learning throughout the life-course, and as a consequence of participation in the programme. Whilst the paper should interest scholars, policy makers, and those concerned with programme development, it may also resonate with entrepreneurs and help them make sense of their experience of leadership development.

Entrepreneurial dynamics and higher education institutions in the post-communist world

This study draws on the institutional and regional entrepreneurship literature to develop a conceptual framework that analyses the impact of higher education institutions on entrepreneurial dynamics. It is used to examine the cities of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) during the period 1995–2008. Extending the multi-pillar institutional concept, it is found that higher education institutions play a prominent role in fostering entrepreneurial dynamics in CIS cities through multiple channels, including human capital development, cultivating a positive attitude towards entrepreneurship, affecting the perceptions of the knowledge and skills needed to start up a successful business, and knowledge spillovers.

Evaluating e-learning systems: an empirical investigation on students' perception in higher education area

In search of better, traditional learning universities have expanded their ways to deliver knowledge and integrate cost effective e-learning systems. Universities’ use of information and communication technologies has grown tremendously over the last decade. To ensure efficient use of the e-learning system, the Arab Open University (AOU) in Bahrain was the first to use e-learning system there, aimed to evaluate the good and bad practices, detect errors and determine areas for further improvements in usage. This study critically evaluated the students’ perception of the elearning system in Bahrain and recommended changes to improve students’ e-learning usage. Results of the study indicated that, in general, students have favourable perceptions toward using the e-learning system. This study has shown that technology acceptance is the most variable, factor that contributes to students’ perception and satisfaction of the e-learning system.

The Mixed-Method Library: Qualitative Research and the Future of Assessment in Higher Education

This presentation was offered as part of the CUNY Library Assessment Conference, Reinventing Libraries: Reinventing Assessment, held at the City University of New York in June 2014.

Interactive Lightning Session: Game-based Learning in Higher Education

Games are known for leveraging enthusiasm, engagement, energy, knowledge, and passion on gamers; areas that are fundamentally important in higher education. Our panelists will share their perspectives on how Higher Education can take advantage of the potential of game based learning to create a more engaging student learning experien

Universal Design in Higher Education

While colleges and universities increasingly draw upon the concept of Universal Design to create an ideal learning environment, it can be challenging to apply the concept practically in the classroom. This project explores innovative ways to incorporate Universal Design into campus architecture, classroom technology and curriculum development. Further, this brief describes different approaches used by universities to garner faculty interest and offer effective training in Universal Design.

The Profile of a Manager in Higher Education Institution in Latin America: The Case of the EBAPE

The aim of this study is to analyze the profile of today’s manager, according to the classical management literature, working on internationalized higher education institute. This paper draws together knowledge about the manager’s profile in a corporate environment and how it can be appreciated in a higher education institute all of this taking into consideration the environment that nowadays exists in these institutions. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews, with professors of the Fundacao Getulio Vargas, more specific on their Public and Business Administration School (EBAPE), which had active roles on its development, internationalization and during some point in time their management. The findings obtained where analyzed under the perspective brought by the theoretical reference framework, and, based on this approach is represented the manager whom could have a better perspective to administrate a higher education institute.

Defining student participation and empowerment in higher education

Customer participation has been studied for decades; however, it gained a postmodern perspective around the year 2000. Customers have become co-creators of personalized experiences, moving from the audience to the stage. In the educational context, students must take responsibility for their learning process and participate in the production of the service. This changing is providing opportunities and challenges for higher education institutions (HEIs) to redefine their relationship with stakeholders, especially with students. This study is based on the service dominant logic (SDL) perspective because students are assumed to take the role of co-creators of knowledge in the educational setting. The research uses adapted frameworks and concepts applied in organizational, knowledge-intensive business services (KIBS) and also medical studies to advance the understanding of value co-creation in the HEI context. The current study addresses a lack of research in the higher education context focusing on defining students’ participation and students’ empowerment in higher education context. An empirical investigation was developed with traditional schools in Brazil. This investigation allowed the description of the constructs in the specific context. The description of student participation in HEIs context reflects the relevance of three dimensions – information sharing, personal interaction and responsible behavior. In the Brazilian context, responsible behavior is the weakest dimension in the construct, because the responsibilities are unbalanced between students and professors. The main reasons identified for this unbalanced relation were cultural issues and local regulation. Student empowerment was described as composed by four dimensions – meaningfulness, competence, impact and choice; however, one of them – choice – was identified as the weakest dimension, facing cultural and bureaucratic barriers for implementation in the Brazilian educational context. Moreover, interviewees spontaneously cited the idea of trust in the faculty as an important antecedent of student participation that must be considered when analyzing student participation and empowerment mechanisms. An additional contribution was the proposal of a theory-based framework for understanding the service dominant logic perspective in the HEI context, in which student participation and student empowerment were explored as mechanisms leading to positive student behavior toward institution.

The effects of accountability on higher education

This paper analyzes the effect of an accountability system in the Brazilian college market. For each discipline, colleges were assigned a grade that depended on the scores of their students on the ENC, an annual mandatory exam. Those grades were then disclosed to the public, giving applicants information about college quality. The system also established rewards and penalties based on the colleges’ grades. I find that the ENC had a substantial effect on different measures of college quality, such as faculty education and the proportion of full-time faculty. The detailed information from this unique dataset and the fact that the ENC started being required for different disciplines in different years allow me to control for time-specific effects, thus minimizing the bias caused by policy endogeneity. Indeed, I find strong evidence on the importance of controlling for time-specific effects: estimates of the impact of the ENC on college quality more than double when I do not take those effects into account. The ENC also affects positively the ratio between applicants and vacancies, and it decreases the faculty and the entering class sizes. The results suggest that its introduction fostered competition and favored colleges entering the market.

The Digital Divide in the University: The Appropriation of ICT in Higher Education Students from Bogota, Colombia

The growth and integration of ICTs in the global economy have created conditions that profoundly affect our society, dividing communities between those who effectively appropriate these resources and those who do not, what is called the digital divide. This exploratory study seeks to propose and validate ways of assessing this phenomenon in higher education, from the construction of a model and a comprehensive methodology that value contextual conditions, in addition to measuring access factors and motivation for use, that have been employed in previous research. To obtain indications about the behavior of this phenomenon, we developed research with students from three universities in Bogota, administering 566 surveys in four phases that would test the variables proposed in the model. The results show that the variables of the model link causally, with the strongest relations between education, attitude towards ICTs and ICT application. Although students have good access to ICTs and high levels of education, no strong relationship was found in regards to perceived impact on production. This may be explained by a superficial appropriation of ICT, due to a context that is alien to its conditions of origin (industrialism, innovation), poor quality of education and economies not centered around R&D.

Teachers Formation in Higher Education: Some Aspects under the Light of Education-Work Relations

This text is mainly aimed to address essential aspects of teacher formation in the light of education-work relations in the higher education, from our systematic experience in higher education teaching, particularly teaching and research in the field of Didactics discipline. This formulation is justified considering our concern in seeking to situate this discussion in the context of bringing together knowledge areas and the field of teaching knowledge. Still, our choice to develop such an approach in the light of work-education relationship is due to the belief about the possibilities of seeking to overcome the requirements imposed by capitalism to our educational system, within the possible contradictions of these relationships. In this context the teachers’ formation in higher education gains social and strategic importance, taking on the task of forming individuals of “action-reflection-action” in a society established historically based on the social relations which settle in the light of capital’s multiple determinations. It appears that, in this sense, the major confrontations have been given within the discussions about what to prioritize or combine in the list of criteria and content for teacher’s formation. In Didactic, we seek to emphasize discussions that we consider with a philosophical background, referring to the orientation of teaching practice in knowledge of contemporary ideological struggle; socio-historical, referring to the possibility of formation of disciplines, among them Didactic, and curriculums and references to support its guidance in the process of teacher’s formation. This context of discussion is based on the concrete teaching practice with a view to transformation and to search for new syntheses in terms of knowledge and in terms of historical reality. Then therefore, our methodological approach grounded in the dimensions of the same unit: historical materialism as posture, method and as praxis.

Typology of companies networks for competitive assessment: an application in higher education institutions

Taking into account the changes in the market scenario by virtue of globalization, Institutes of Higher Education (IES) as well as other organizations seek their competitive stability. For that reason, it is up to organizations to adopt innovative models of management for their operations aimed at improving results. Company networks consist of a model that is perfect for uniting efforts through cooperation among partners in a given business, which can involve ties of different natures. This paper shows the development and the application of an auxiliary technique to analyze the intensity, nature and importance of internal and external relations in the formation of results for a company network. For such, a multiple case study was conducted at two IES in the State of São Paulo and their networks of partners and employees in order to observe their specificities and organizational strategies. The study demonstrated the existence of specific performance criteria (pillars) for each IES and its network, resulting from its competitive reality. It reveals evidence that the education pillar is strengthened in both cases, and the research pillar is growing, although it is the weakest. The outreach pillar is the most robust in the public IES and the financial sustainability pillar is relevant for the private IES, and it was only detected in this IES.

Higher education in evening courses in Brazil: history, growth and public policies at the beginning of the XXI Century

There are three distinct and complementary objectives in this article in order to clarify the higher education outline in Brazil, specifically evening courses (classes are held on weekdays, generally from 7:00 pm to 10:30 pm) and thesecurrent sector policies. The first objective is to present a short historical overview on the establishment of evening courses in Brazil, including those in the higher education level, occurred on the middle of last century. The second objective is to demonstrate the growth of evening higher education in Brazil, considering that in 1998, of the 2.1 million college enrollments, 55.3% were enrolled in evening courses; in 2010, twelve years later, of the 5.4 million students enrolled, there were 63.5% enrolled in evening courses. This expansion is due to the growing need of many students who must work while attending college, to defray costs of the study as well as personal and family costs. The reality of the working student is hostile considering external factors, such as transport problems, public security and lack of legislation for flexible working hours. The third objective is to discuss current public policies to expand eveningopenings in public institutions which represent nowadays only 16.1% of the 3.4 million enrollments for evening classes, including federal (6.8%), state (7.0%) and municipal (2.3%) institutions. In the third objective it is included the discussion of programs for scholarships and tuition loans. The methodology applied was to rescue historical information on the establishment and the expansion of evening courses in Brazil, analyzing the current general Brazilian policies and the specific ones from the State of São Paulo. The research results pointed to the importance of federal programs for scholarships and tuition loans for students from private institutions such as the 1,382,484 scholarships since 2004 (PROUNI Program) and the 847,000 tuition loans since 1999 (FIES Program). Important steps have been made by the Brazilian government. Considering that there are 3,987,424 enrollments in private institutions, the effectiveness of the programs for scholarships and tuition loans is still insufficient to meet the universal benefits for the student’s needs. Evening courses became the real instrument of social inclusion for many Brazilian youths and must be expanded quantitatively and qualitatively, with aggressive public policies, including also, scholarships and tuition loans.